


The Siren Song of Stone

by We_Have_Become_Anathema



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, One Shot, Pygmalion, Samifer Christmas Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_Have_Become_Anathema/pseuds/We_Have_Become_Anathema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luciferion is determined to complete the greatest statue he has ever carved, but is pulled away by a commission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Siren Song of Stone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece for talesfromperdition over on Tumblr, and is part of the Samifer Christmas Exchange. I was called in as a pitch-hitter for this piece, which is why it's a bit behind all the other.

           “As I keep telling you, they simply do not interest me. No, no, do not say that. You are nothing like them, so why, in the name of all that is holy, would you compare yourself with them? I will not hear it, so never say it again.” Luciferion chittered away as he worked, talking to himself. His strange habits were perpetually confusing the observers who dropped by to watch him work in his studio. Often callers would find him carving on his marble, holding one-sided conversations, and they would excuse themselves as they assumed he already had someone there.

           There never was anyone there.

           The only company he kept was his servant, Azazello, and his statue that he was slowly, painstakingly drawing forth from the marble block.

           “If you continue on with this vein of conversation, I will not speak to you again today. I have already made it perfectly clear that you are not to think such things about yourself. After all, just because you lack a face, it means nothing.” He replied testily, shaking his chisel at the roughly hewn block in warning. “Would Zeus or Poseidon hold it against me if I could not speak, having no tongue? No, they would understand my limitations were preset by the stars and the fates, and would hold me to perform as ably as I could within my own limitation.”

           Stripping off his toga, he draped it over his stool, standing in the afternoon heat in nothing more than his subligaculum. “Oh stop blushing like a spring virgin anointing Ceras’ fields. You have no eyes yet, so you have no… Well I am glad to know that without a finished head you already have an imagination strong enough to tell you what I would look like without my toga. You are ludicrous. You know that, yes?”

           While this ridiculous scene often chases would-be observers off, when he finally is silent for a few hours, mind completely focused on his art, his craft, his life; they came flocking in to the windows and the walkways. For it was only fitting that the sculptor’s own body would be as finely crafted as those he carved from the rocks, practically Adonis himself. His entire body was involved in his carving as he climbed higher to get leverage or contorted to get to a small section nearly closed off because of the twisting, twining form of his sculpture.

           When he focused on his sculpture, his eyes would take on a feverish light, seeing things that no one else could see. Once someone asked him what he focused on with such dedication and ferocity, and he had replied that he was looking in at the sculpture that was trapped inside the marble. If you had asked him now, he would say that his gaze was held captive by the face of a god. He only prayed that the gods of Mount Olympus would not strike him down for his heresy before he had a chance to finish his sculpture.

           And so his hammer met his chisel in an endless melody that fell into rhythms as old as time itself. Each tap on the chisel brought him a little closer to the finish, a little closer to seeing the face of his new god rendered in all the glory that he could ascribe to it.

 

* * *

           “Luciferion, you’ve been obsessed with this piece for months now, surely you could take a small break and work on an actual commission… the paying kind that will continue to support your household and put food on your table.” Gabriel said with exaggerated desperation, ever the long suffering, if often absent, friend of the eccentric sculptor. “And Azazello says that you have lost weight again. Please tell me that you are not venerating your new god by the sacrifice of your food and wellbeing.” The man tried to play it off as a joke, but the slight strain to his humor made it all too apparent that he was indeed worried that his friend was attempting to bring a new god into the world.

           “I solemnly swear to you that that is the last thing on my mind.” Luciferion replied with his own quiet longsuffering that was vital to remain friends with Gabriel for longer than the stretch of a night sharing his chambers. “He is not a god, Gabriel, or at least he has not told me such. He is simply trapped in this cage of marble and quartz, begging for me to set him free. How can I work on another piece when I know that he is confined, doomed to such a horrendous fate as this?” The look he sends Gabriel is perfectly serious and the smallest bit imploring.

           Gabriel quirked an eyebrow and studied his friend for a long moment, “You do realize that you just told me you have been talking to a block of marble. A block of marble which you’ve anthropomorphized into being a man trapped inside a block of marble.”

           They stared at each other for a long moment.

           “Yes?”

           Right. “Obviously you either don’t realize how crazy that sounds or you just don’t care.” Gabriel moved forward and clapped a hand onto his friend’s shoulder a few times before looping his arm entire around the man and leaning in. “So, how about this, you take on one commission and let this statue sit for a week, two, tops, and get a little money so that you can pay Azazello. And it will also give you a breather from this project and when you come back to it,” seeing the look Luciferion shot him, he corrected, “him, you’ll have fresh eyes for your work. Eh? I think if he’s been trapped within this marble for as long as he has, another week or two won’t hurt him, right?”

           Luciferion looked at Gabriel and then over at his still faceless statue. He knew he shouldn’t be as torn over this as he was, he knew that his obsession was both what made him an amazing artist but also what made him a danger to himself at times. And yet the obsession that he held for finishing this particular sculpture far surpassed any he had felt before.

           With a sign and the slightest shifting of his weight, he looked over at Gabriel and nodded. “Alright, no you are right. It is not fair of me to keep Azazello without his money, nor food on our table.”

           As he let Gabriel slip their arms together and lead him away to get cleaned up for whichever disgustingly rich patron Gabriel had found for him, he tried his best not to cringe as he heard the whispers of the soundless voice calling him back.

           Stone shouldn’t have a siren’s song.

 

* * *

            As always Gabriel was terrible at estimating how long a commission would take, and Luciferion realized that he really should not blame anyone but himself for having believed his friend. It was not that Gabriel did not mean well, it was simply that if the man said he was going to the store and would be back in an hour, you might be lucky to find him in a brothel a week later. His concept of time was lax at best and his ability for planning and forethought were nearly nonexistence.

            So as the project was stretching onto its fifth week, Luciferion was understandably impatient to finish it; however there was more to it than just his annoyance at the original projected two week window. No, there were the dreams.

            They had started shortly after he began the commission, small at first, just his name being called by a voice that made no sound, as if the word was resonating within his very soul, a statement of pure intent. Each time he awoke, he would be panting from an unspeakable fear that time was running out, but he never knew why. He decided that it was stress, nothing more, and wrote it off.

 

* * *

            The commissioner that Gabriel had found for him was a fabulously wealthy hedonist who figured prominently in the city of Athens. What was interesting was that the Athenian was renowned in his city not because of his wealth, or even his decadent tastes, but his talent for finding the most breathtaking youths and raising them to wealth and fame themselves. His name was Balthazar and he was the man to know.

            His latest pet project was a young man named Castiel who was said to have the eyes of an angel and the body of a god; and when Luciferion first laid his eyes on the man, he would have had to agree. Of course as appealing as the toned muscles and lithe body was, the sculptor found himself oddly disinterested, flashes of another form in his mind; marble and dust and a workshop with the dawn light streaming through the windows. Was it wrong to find himself less attracted to the man before him, pale skin flushed with the vivacity of youth, than to an unfinished project in his workshop?

            But for an artist such as Luciferion, it was not about the beauty of the form before him, although that could certainly excite him if he let it, but a compatibility of spirit. Perhaps that was why he took so few to his bed, finding the majority of his would-be suitors, both men and women, to be insipid and incongruous with him. Besides, even if he had been interested in pursuing the youth, twenty some years his junior, he was not blind to the adoration in Castiel’s gaze every time it fell upon Balthazar.

            Perhaps it would have been kinder of him to take Castiel aside and tell him that trying to love Balthazar was akin to loving the tempest, for the man was wild as the wind and free as the birds. You could no more hold him in a relationship than you could hold time in your hands, and the tales of the broken hearts left in his wake were voluminous enough to have filled tomes upon tomes.

            No, it was not his place or his prerogative to deprive Castiel of this important life lesson, although he might be tempted to do so if it would make the young man stop turning his head to gaze upon the object of his preoccupation. Really, it was getting out of hand and he was trying to get the line of his neck sculpted today.

            “Castiel. If you would be so kind,” Luciferion called out, words pleasant and tone poisonous, “to look at the point we both agreed on, that would be of _marvelous_ assistance to me.”

            Castiel looked at him sheepishly, eyes silently imploring the sculptor not to divulge his secret just yet.

            He might have found the man’s actions endearing if he did not want to be finished and done with this commission. There was a pull in the very core of his being that was growing stronger with each passing day; a pull that he knew led him back to his quiet workshop and the man with the unfinished face.

            Statue, he reminded himself, Gabriel got angry at him whenever he referred to his statue as if it was alive, as if it was a man.

            Balthazar breezed into the room, his movements perfectly engineered to draw attention to his fine physique and rich attire. If there was nothing else to be said for the man, it was that he knew how to command the attention of everyone in a room; for yet again Castiel strained to look at his patron, and Luciferion was beginning to lose his patience.

            “Ah, wonderful, truly wonderful.” Balthazar said, running a hand along the silken smooth marble of Castiel’s likeness. “Luciferion, Gabriel told me that you were an artist without equal, but I do believe he was selling you shorter than you deserve. You are a gift sent from the gods to mere mortal man, able to capture our fantasies and our very souls in your stone.” The praise was far too much, but Balthazar was a man of extremes, and when he fancied something he would rival the great Poet.

            Smiling demurely, while his eyes sparkled with sardonic mirth, Luciferion nodded towards his patron. “You at far too kind with your praises, Balthazar. I am a tradesman and a craftsman, but by no means a gift from the gods. Be wary of how highly you praise me, for I would abhor having the ire of the gods stoked against me.”

            “Oh, Luciferion, you are indeed a silver tongued devil. Surely you know of your skills and that all I say is true. So why do you play at being this meek and humble artist? Polyclitus or Phidias would be hard pressed to carve a more exquisite form than yours.” The hunger in his eyes was obvious as he took in all of Luciferion. “I can see that you are a man of strong passions, and I imagine that if I were praising that statue of yours that I would receive quite a difference response. Am I wrong?”

            Luciferion caught the sparkling in Balthazar’s eye and the way he draped himself just shy of provocatively over the statue, and he knew in that moment that Balthazar either was a patron of the arts of such extremes that he endlessly idolized his work and would go to any lengths to see the breadth of it or his patron’s unapologetically roving eyes had fallen upon him as his next target. Either possibility was not particularly comforting.

            With endless caution, he placed his hands over Balthazar’s wrists and moved him off of the statue. “Again, I am honored at your appraisal of my talents, Balthazar, but it is not modesty that directs that I disagree. I have seen the works of whom you speak, and there is far for my own work to improve before I could be compared to them.”

            Slipping around the statue, Balthazar sidled up alongside Luciferion and smirked darkly. “You protest too much, my sculptor. Simply allow me the pleasure of praising you, it does you no harm and allows me to shower you with affections that I fear you are not interested in. Unless you would rather I praise your body directly instead of thinly veiling it behind your work?”

            The boldness of Balthazar might have seemed a brazen offense to others, but Luciferion could appreciate the drive to pursue what one desired, and he chuckled at it. “No, indeed, I should not want you to praise me directly, for while I am gratified by your accolades, I fear that I would not be the partner you are looking for.”

            “No?” Balthazar asked with a slight pout to his lips, but curiosity in his eyes.

            Ah, if only he felt the right connection, he was certain that the Athenian would indeed be one of the best partners he had ever taken to his chambers. “No,” he replied kindly, “for my years of trysts and exploits have since passed.”

            Sighing theatrically, Balthazar glanced at his mouth before shrugging lightly, no more depressed from this rejection than he would be by any other. “Pity. You are still a young man. Should you ever reconsider…” he said, leaving the offer in the air between them.

            “Not that young, I fear. And you would be the first to know.” Luciferion assured him.

            Nodding and walking over to his great lounge of pillows from where he watched each day’s steady progression on his sculpture, he waved for the work to resume as he popped a grape into his mouth.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Luciferion caught the undisguised jealousy in Castiel’s gaze, and he thought that the world was greatly unfair when one man should desire another and get not so much as a second look, while he, entirely uninterested in these attentions, should have to so delicately denounce them. He smiled sadly at Castiel and returned to his carving.

 

* * *

            The dreams steadily progressed into nightmares, the silent voice that had once simply called out to him now screamed in abject terror, shaking him to the very depths of his soul. The voice without sound was somehow raw from the screaming and his ears bled in his dream as he groped in the dark, vainly attempting to find the owner and author of so piteous a sound. And yet it was not a sound at all, it was a thought and a feeling and a vibration that shook the whole of creation all at once.

            In the dark there were flashes of light that illuminated the blank, staring, sightless eyes of sculptures, sentinels that never noticed his passing. It disturbed him to be in such a place of paradox, voices with no sound, eyes with no sight, searching and searching but never finding.

            By the end of the fifth week, each morning he awoke drenched in a cold sweat, his mind filled with images of Death walking upon the lands of those sentinels, pushing them down, breaking them open, always searched their rubble for something. Someone? He did not know what ill omen this was, however he was assured by their frequency and their increasing severity that it was indeed an omen.

            If he didn’t finish this commission soon and find what these dreams were pointing him towards, he knew with a preternatural surety that a heinous evil would come to pass. Now if only his dreams, visions, would explain themselves enough that he could prevent the coming tragedy.

 

* * *

            “You’ve been talking to yourself.” Castiel commented as he sat, once again, for Luciferion, his face in the full light of morning so that the sculptor could capture these last details and finish the great oratorical statue of the young Adonis.

            “Have I?” Luciferion replied absently as he ran a fine toothed rasp over a cheek, softening out the rough lines into sweeping planes and immortal flesh.

            “Yes.” The young model replied without so much as twitching his lips. He had become far more proficient at remaining still in these past weeks, and had ended up being quite a good model beyond his fair features and enviable body.

            Pausing a moment to wipe away the marble dust, Luciferion looked over and smirked, “Was any of it of interest?”

            Castiel remained quiet for a long moment before turning his eyes and catching the older man’s gaze. “Who’s Samuel?”

            Samuel? Searching his memories, Luciferion could think of no Samuel that he had ever known. Of course it was a common enough name to hear in passing, but there were none by that name who had ever impacted his life enough that he should be talking about them while he worked. “I cannot say I know. Why? What did I say about this Samuel?”

            For some reason Castiel looked dismayed at that. “You said little, but the way you spoke his name… I would have assumed him your lover or your god.”

            Setting down his rasp and cloth, he walked out from behind the statue and stared at Castiel, trying to understand the cause of his sudden melancholy. “Those would seem to be two very separate things to most, Castiel. Why do you group them together?”

            “Because,” Castiel started, but then stopped himself for a long moment to gather his thoughts, “is not the act of love an act of worship? Do we not praise a lover as we might our gods, sometimes more so? And is not the consumption bed an altar for sacrifice?”

            These were most certainly intriguing concepts and questions that the young man brought forth, and Luciferion felt ashamed that he had not considered the youth intellectual enough for such concepts. “I… I can say only that I have never shared a love that would do justice to your precepts, Castiel. The times I have taken another to my chambers were in my youth, when I sought nothing more than a moment’s companionship and release. But tell me, why are you troubled so when I say I know no one by that name?”

            Shifting his weight and looking away, Castiel frowned. “That is because… you sounded like the voice that Ares must when he looks upon Aphrodite, and I have never heard so reverent and loving a voice. I know I am but young and that my dreams and aspirations of finding love may well be naïve, but I thought that if you had one such as that, perhaps you could impart the knowledge to me, on how to find them and how to keep them. To win the heart of the one you love.”

            Ah. Of course. “If I had the answer to that, do you imagine I would still be a sculptor? No, with knowledge that great and wondrous, I should think I would become an oracle, for certainly the whole of creation would be laid out before me.” Reaching forward to ruffle Castiel’s hair, Luciferion gave him a genuine smile. “The only advice that I have to give is that you should neither settle for someone who does not treat you well, nor should you think that someone has settled for you. I am certain that you will find love as true as you imagine it to be some day.”

            Ducking his head, Castiel nodded, “Thank you, Luciferion. You… are truly a great man.”

 

* * *

            When he finally finished the commissioned sculpture after five and a half weeks, it was with both a somber smile and an anxious heart that he readied to say his goodbyes. During his time with them, Luciferion had surprisingly bonded with the young Castiel, and he wished him well before he turned to Balthazar, who grabbed at his forearm and pulled into a warrior’s embrace, strong and assured. “Please do come again, Luciferion. I would be honored to have you stay again, and if necessary, I will commission another work from you to make it happen.”

            It was obvious that Balthazar had not given up his hope for seducing him, and a portion of him found that thought pleasing, but for the pull in his core, ever bidding him to leave this fair city. “I will visit again, do not let yourself be troubled over that.” He assured his benefactor, before clapping his back as well and pulling back.

            So with his small satchel of tools and his bag of simple clothes, he boarded the sloop that was destined for his home of Crete; and as it pulled out of the harbor, he turned back and saw Castiel waving him off with his customary, unassuming smile.

 

* * *

            He was accosted yet again by the nightmare as he slept on the passing, the motion of the rough seas translating into the push and pull of great hands upon his flesh, trying to stretch him farther than he could go. In his desperation and his fury, he looked up to the turbid skies and cried forth, “What do you wish of me? Gods of Olympus, what great transgression have I committed against thee that you torment me so? If there is meaning in these dreams, please, make clear my sight that I may be your faithful servant, for I have only a man’s understanding. I do not see down from the heavens nor can I decipher the riddle of these dreams.”

            No answer came to him from the heavens, but one did make itself known in a statue of Aphrodite approaching him. “Sculptor, we have seen your work and we are pleased. But there is a piece you have not finished, and I confess, my sisters and I have longed to see his face. You already know his name, for he has owned your heart since time immortal.”

            “Samuel…” Luciferion breathed the name as if a prayer. “But… Aphrodite, great goddess, am I not wrong for the love I hold for a statue, and one that it not yet done at that?”

            Aphrodite’s avatar traced a marble finger down his face, her smile enigmatic as the sphinx. “Oh, Man, you understand so little. Do you know the meaning of the name?”

            The meaning came to him, as surely as if it had always been known to him. “Name of God…God has heard.”

            “And both are true. We have heard the cries of your heart, your dissatisfaction with the loves that you pursued in your youth, the Propoetides who ruined all of Woman for you. And you have felt that this statue is a new god, for you shall worship him as one, and thus his is the name of god.”

            When Luciferion awoke, he remembered not the vision from the goddess, but the undeniable determination to finish his sculpture remained.

 

* * *

            “No, no, no. You cannot convince me that I require sleep, not now, not after having been parted from you for so long. I have sinned against you by leaving you so encased in eternal torment within stone and darkness, and I shall not delay your freedom simply for my own needs.” Luciferion chided his sculpture, smoothing a tall, proud forehead of any imperfections. “Now look at you, suggesting that I should rest before you are finished? All that you require is the finest of details, the ring of your pupils, the last wisps of your hair.”

            Azazello came into the room several hours later to find his master asleep, leaning into the arms of his sculpture, and he smiled with the knowledge that his master must have finished his magnum opus, for there was no other reason that Luciferion would have allowed himself to sleep if that were not true. Silently he backed from the room, deciding that he would bring food in again once his master had awoken from his much needed slumber.

 

* * *

            “You know, Luciferion, you truly talk far too much,” said a voice that the sculptor had never heard before, as soft, supple lips pressed themselves to his temple.

            “Samuel?” He asked, still with a foot firmly entrenched in the realm of sleep.

            “Mhmmmm.”

           And as a pair of arms that Luciferion knew far more intimately than his own wrapped around him with surprising strength and warmth, he smiled to himself.


End file.
